Barbarians Season 2 on Netflix: Where are you originally from? – Media

Than two years ago the first season of barbarians When Netflix started, the first major German history production for the streaming service, many critics wrote down their surprise that the story of the Varus Battle had not been filmed for a long time. It was actually very easy to understand why not and even now that it has happened, as a viewer you always have a queasy blood-and-soil feeling with pictures like these: Two muscle men stand in a circle of fire at the tribal meeting, the Thing , and explain how they intend to save their people. Even more musclemen go into battle wearing war paint. And a beautiful blond woman, in the firelight, nurtures the son she bore to the leader on her breast. Germanic romance is barbarians not foreign. One could easily dismiss the series as fodder for folkish sentimentality. But it is not that easy. barbarians is too clever – and too complicated for that.

The second season begins a while after the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. The Germans won it, but Rome is back on the muddy mat. Not far from the Cheruscan village where Reik Ari is hiding with his wife Thusnelda and their newborn, the military leader Tiberius is waiting in a large camp for the next chance to subdue the barbarians. Ari (Laurence Rupp) used to be called Arminius, he is German, but grew up privileged in Rome as a child of prey. In the first season he returned to his homeland as a Roman officer, defected and finally, as leader of the Cherusci, defeated his foster father Varus and thousands of Romans in one of the most shameful battles known in Rome’s history. The thesis of barbarians is that blood is thicker than water – even when it comes civilized and clean through chic Roman aqueducts.

A dark-skinned woman is now also fighting on the side of the barbarians

The basic conflict in season two is not new: again the Germanic tribes have to pull together to ward off the colonizers. This time, the 70,000 soldiers of the Marcomanni leader Marbod are supposed to help, but he is a bit shy because he would actually rather trade with the Romans than fight them. The Austrian actor Murathan Muslu (“8 Days”, “Wilde Maus”) plays the imposing Marbod. Marbod also has a beautiful blonde wife. But he still loves someone who doesn’t fit into the heteronormative expectation scheme of classic Germanic fantasies. Viewers who are only looking for raw, simple Germanism here will not only be disappointed. There are also Romans of Germanic descent who only confess to their adoptive mother Rome with great verve – and only after the rejection of the Romans (“Barbarians!”), i.e. through non-acceptance in the society of arrival, they return to the context of their origin to be driven. In times of ongoing migration and integration debates, a history series could hardly be more up-to-date.

The authors Andreas Heckmann, Arne Nolting and Jan-Martin Scharf have considered breaks at every corner of their story that bring their characters into interesting identity conflicts: Thusnelda continues to be an early “working mom” in all battles. Ari’s son has a different biological father and with the Carthaginian Dido (Cynthia Micas) there is now also a dark-skinned woman fighting on the side of the barbarians. The shared fate of the oppressed does not just grow out of shared genes.

Barbarians, on Netflix.

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